Petrobras left New Zealand and surrendered their drilling permits late last year after a concerted campaign by Te whānau a Apanui and others. The Government’s ‘extreme energy’ oil drilling plans are in tatters with Petrobras gone, Apache Oil gone, Anardarko delaying their activities and Solid Energy’s lignite coal plans kaput. Key is now resorting to desperate overseas pleas but should give it up and focus instead on real alternatives like clean energy and building manufacturing jobs.

I don’t know why Key would want to welcome them back when their risky exploratory deep sea oil drilling off the East Coast as we know that exploratory drilling is the riskiest phase and threatened to see oil washing up on the beaches.

It’s been amazing over summer watching the votes roll in on the Best Beach competition how we all love our beaches in New Zealand. Congratulations to the winner, Ohope Beach. They were so happy at winning around 300 of them did this great Harlem Shake on the beach. Check out the video.

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6 thoughts on “Key in Brazil wooing Petrobras”

Good heads up, Gareth. Key and his people have been pushing through a variety of laws that would help facilitate further mineral and petroleum exploration and mining in places like the EEZ in the last 12 months-even changing the conditions in law for permits to explore to make it easier for Oil companies to come in. I got no doubts Key wants this legislative framework aligned under the Trans Pacific Partnership being negotiated secretly by baldheads of many nations in secret.

As usual, ordinary NZers only got to give submissions to the laws regarding the EEZ and mining, while Key and his business peeps set the terms of debate, and passed the new 2012 mining legislation. But those laws won’t really really matter in the long term, because ordinary Kiwi resistance at grassroots level to these laws and policies will occur because Key and his people have not included ordinary NZers in full up, upfront korero about the implications of such laws and what they will mean for ordinary people- denial of rights to own, protect and guard the moana for Maaori as Tangata Whenua; disruption of oceanic eco-systems; environmental degradation not just in NZ EEZ waters, but also in the wider Pacific ocean including the nations of the Pacific; short term economic profits for Petroleum companies and business people; while poor folks in Aotearoa deal with the long term environmental, ecological, and spiritual impacts of further expansion of dirty fuel energy, infrastructure in this country for the next several generations- long after the Petroleum companies have gapped it out of the country.

This is not just a NZ problem. The peoples of the Pacific, including Papua New Guinea, are facing new pressures to open up their oceans to mining operations.

Petroleum Industry people in NZ have been talking up the ‘benefits’ of Petroleum mining in their PR of recent months, including a conference in Wellington last year. They also bought out their boy Scott Tinker recently to spread the petroleum company gospel- about dirty energy being ‘good’ energy; NZs ‘potential’; while spreading the usual and standard denials of Peak Oil; and extolling the virtues of offshore Petroleum mining. I seen his PR bag on TV1 last Sunday morning. But people ain’t stupid in Aotearoa, and Tinker can’t say he understands oil is running out, and that we need to move to green energy- when his preaching mission has been funded by a Petroleum Industry seeking to extend, widen, and deepen NZ’s dependence on fossil fuels. I thought that was out of it, the way Tinker tried to paint himself as someone in the middle of a debate, a ‘moderate’ in the Petroleum/ Green energy debate- when he is really on the side of the Petroleum Industry. His interview on TV1 Sunday morning was out of it. That fulla is living in a mirage if he thinks he can fool ordinary working class people of all cultures in this land.

The Petroleum industry talks up the value of mining offshore, but the industry has nothing substantial to say about oil spills and how they will be dealt with- Greenpeace has done some strong work in regards to the question of oil spills in their campaigns last year.

The Petroleum Industry in NZ has nothing to say about dirty energy and the effects of more greenhouse gas production on global greenhouse gas levels. Interesting to see Marsden Pt Oil refinery spending $365 million on a plant update- that ain’t by chance either, considering moves being made in other areas mentioned above.

I got no doubts Key and many other industry peeps around NZ will continue to hawk NZ’s oceans and lands to the highest bidders in the Petroleum industry. But lots of ordinary people in NZ who have been burned by the neo liberal economic and social policies of this latest Nat govt don’t buy the hustle about the need for an expansion of Petroleum mining, and the neo- liberal PR mantra of ‘jobs, growth, productivity, or trickle down benefits for all NZers’ Key and others have pitched in the media.
Ordinary working class Kiwis can see Key has no real long term energy strategy at all- if he did, he would be making radical shifts to cleaner energy now, so as to make the jump from our overdependence on finite dirty fuels easier for all. But more work needs to be done to keep sharing that korero out to ordinary people- good kiwi people struggling just to make rent, or run cars, and feed their families. Sometimes the bigger questions about energy aren’t top priority when you got to take kids to the doctors, feed families, and you don’t got much money to even make ends meet. I see the hardships in my own PI communities. But good heads up, Gareth

The risk cannot be handed to Brazil… or to Petrobras… it is to New Zealand beaches and waters that any accident will come.

The arrangements to date have included risible risk management and inadequate insurance arrangements, and the question “WHY?” has to be asked here, because that will be some damned expensive oil to get IF it is there, even if everything goes well… and it is much more expensive in real terms because the CO2 charge for burning it has to be added…. and at BEST it simply puts off by a few years the date at which we absolutely have no choice but to go to renewable and sustainable sources.

We can do that NOW and save both the money on the drilling and the risk, with the downside that we won’t be able to sell oil and make the climate worse in order to make a few bucks… which mostly wind up going to someone overseas.

I can’t imagine much that is as clearly ideologically driven stupidity except for almost every other thing this government has done to us.

My guess is that Key is still tied in some way to his NY/London bankster buddies. Trust him I cannot. I am from NY and his body language and face practically shout “con job” at me. I wonder at the tone-deafness of Kiwis to this.

Key has never puts Kiwis interests at heart…all he could think of is making all sorts of deals so he himself and his mates can benifit from those deals politically or/and financially…I am being still shocked too often by what he does and what he say. Can we think of any other country with a worse leader than he is? I guess he would like to be compared to those really worst ones in the world and boasted that he is doing a not too bad job for NZ…Sad!